Trial Run

Trial Run
I arrived at 'The Place' at about eight on the night of the show. I was dressed in black leather pants, a white Mexican wedding shirt, and silver concho belt that I bought that day. I got a pair of leather pants at the local Harley distributor right off their rack. The shirt and concho belt were a little harder to find because where do you find a Mexican wedding shirt in Madison, Wisconsin? I ended up in the woman's department of a local retailer. There were no Mexican wedding shirts, so I found a shirt that closest fit the picture in my mind. And the concho belt? Well, just about every woman's department in America carries them or a similar design. The sum of the whole was greater than its parts. Since we had started practicing I had let my hair grow out. It wasn't as long as Morrison's, but altogether I looked like Morrison at his apex.

The band had spent the afternoon setting up their equipment and doing the sound check, while I was shopping. I had spent the morning calling the local papers, including Jim who had taken me to see Ray only a few months prior. I went back stage and found the boys in the dressing room. It was small and cramped. On the far wall there was an old couch that was dirty and stained that Johnny and Brian shared. Ian and Mitchell were sitting in feeble looking chairs with their backs to the door, a rickety table was jammed between the couch and the chairs, and all this was only a few steps from the stage out of sight of the customers.
"Well, lookit here, our own Mr. Mojo Risin'!" Brian said, as I walked into the room.
"I never would've believed it, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes." Mitchell said.
"Well, all right, Michael! We just may pull this off after all."
"What song should we start with?" Johnny asked.
"How about The End!" Ian blurted out, "that way we can make a quick exit, if we need to."
"Ha, ha, very funny," I said, "how about Break On Through?" We sat there waiting to go on. I had plenty of time to think as we sat killing time until we went on. Johnny and Brian were lucky they could pass the time tuning their guitars, or playing little impromptu tunes on the guitars which sat in guitar stands by their side. I tried to get into character I was trying to think like an actor, trying to get Morrison's character in my head and how he would act in this situation. Morrison himself came from a theatre background, having studied at Florida State, he went on to UCLA to study film. Theatre was always one of his intentions. For the feeling of the song I envisioned the promotional film The Doors had done when Break On Through was released as a single, all in black except for a couple of colored lights blinking, each of The Doors in a spotlight separated by darkness, Morrison pouting, trying to seduce the invisible audience.
"Whatta ya gotta do to get a beer around here?" I asked.
"Buy it." The unanimous reply.

We decided to start with Break On Through. It seemed to make sense, it was the first song on the first album and this was our first time in front of an audience. The band went on first. They started to play a drawn out introduction which was typical Doors strategy. They liked to let the pressure in an audience build until the last moment. Then Morrison would come out and release them from the musical trance. I walked out onto the stage and was standing above the heads of the crowd. The room was densely packed and the clamor of voices died down as everyone in the room looked up at me, the audience in anticipation of the show, and the band to see if I could actually do it. The only routes of escape were, singing, or jumping off the stage, pushing my way through the crowd, and out of the club. The band hit the vocal cue for Break On Through. I sang.
"You know day destroys the night." As I sang the words I didn't feel the tension of the audience break, they didn't move, they just sat there staring at me, or carrying on the conversations they were already involved in. I closed my eyes so I wouldn't have to see them and hit the words of the next lyric hard "tried to run, tried to hide" to shock them into some kind of reaction, nothing. During the instrumental I danced around the stage trying to engage them and when I got to "the gate is straight, deep and wide," I made it as suggestive as I could. Nothing. I finished out the song as best I could. When it was over there was silence, no clapping. All I heard was the background noise of drinks being ordered and continuing conversation. The audience didn't seem to be paying any attention to us. I stared at the audience frozen, not knowing what to do. I could see all my hopes ending there, after one song, the shortest career in music history, one song long. The band started playing Roadhouse Blues. I didn't know if I should get off the stage, or stay for whatever humiliation still awaited me. I missed the cue for the vocals to come in, but the band seamlessly went back into the song and started over. I don't think the audience noticed. Then something switched over in me, I wasn't going to allow them to humiliate me. I wasn't going to let them control how I felt. I was in control, I screamed one all for nothing scream, venting all my anger and rage towards the audience, torn from my throat. Then I hit the vocal cue.
"Going to the roadhouse, gonna have a real GOOD TIME!" The audience started clapping and cheering. The infection of the music moving them past the reservations they had, or maybe they were more familiar with 'Roadhouse', or maybe it was just a more up tempo good timey blues song, or just maybe I had shocked them into realizing we couldn't be ignored. During the rest of the set I pulled out all of Morrison's moves that I'd worked up during rehearsals. During the solo on Light My Fire, I went over to Mitchell and watched as he dibbled at his keyboards almost as intently as Ray Manzarek himself. I went into the audience and let a few people scream or sing. I acted out the firing squad scene of The Unknown Soldier. I fell on the stage writhing and contorting, I shocked the audience. In short, I gave them a real Doors show.

To end the show we were going to end it the way The Doors usually did, with The End. From the first lilting tones of the guitar, I was immersed in the song. I became part of the song. I didn't need to remember when to come in, I didn't need to remember the words, I didn't need to react, just act. I just was. I was the song, I was Jim Morrison! When it got to the Oedipal section after delivering the lines, "father? Yes, son? I want to kill you. Mother, I want to...fuck you!" I screamed again as the band lashed out into a musical torrent of primal torment. I whipped myself into a fury, twirling, dancing with the music, no acting, no rehearsed moves, being on-stage was like having sex, you exist outside of time and space, you‘re immortal. I fell to the floor hard and delivered the last lines from the floor. I laid on the floor for a second or two, one arm hanging off the stage, the shirt matted to my skin, my chest heaving, I was empty, devoid of everything, I stood on the precipice looking out into the darkness, as I pulled myself to a sitting position, then it happened...applause, real applause, people waving and cheering. It filled me with me with a warmth and became a power within me, it was birth, a metamorphosis, new worlds lay before me that hadn't existed before, I felt as if I were becoming larger than the room, like the room couldn't contain what I was becoming, I rose up out of my mind "I AM!" I could go on for hours. I didn't want the feeling to end, and I understood why Morrison had wanted to keep the party going. Why he needed to drink just to slow it down so he could feel normal again, to quell the excitement, keeping the hounds at bay. This is where Morrison got that energy.
"Thank you! Thank you!" I said. I decided to throw in an improvised Morrisonesque rap. Not the exact words he ever said, or that I ever heard, but they had the feel of Morrison.
"All right! All right!" I said, "this is work for me, I wanta get outta here and have some fun, fun, fun, and some other words that start with fu!" A final cheer went up as we left the stage.

Back stage we were celebrating, people were crowding into the dressing room to congratulate us. Pressing in to shake our hands and/or tell us how cool we were. It seemed the whole audience had packed in backstage. It was the seed of addiction. I wanted to get up there again and again. I wanted to sing and dance! We were having a beer reveling in the success when Reggie finally was able to make his way to us.
"You guys were great!" I could hear him shouting over the crowd, to Johnny. Johnny looked excited, "I'll book you guys! This Doors act really packed the people in and you guys were really good. If I closed my eyes I could almost see The Doors. I'll book you guys for a couple of weeks, that'll give you some money. If you want, I can set you up with a booker who can get you guys a tour, at least through the Midwest. It'll be a lot of riding around in a van together, sleeping in cheap motels, or in the van on the way to the next gig, but you can get some bucks for it and maybe some groupies. That is if you want to do it?"
"Uh, I, we, uh...." Johnny stammered, and the rest of the band looked sheepish.
Reggie noticed their reaction "This Doors act wasn't just some kind of ploy to book your original act, was it?" Johnny looked at his band mates trying to decide what was the right answer to get the gig.
"No, no...this Doors thing is our act, it's Michael's idea." Johnny said motioning to me.
"OK, then." Reggie said, shaking his head.
"All that doesn't sound too appetizing." Johnny said.
"The groupies do." Ian said.
"C'mon you're in your twenties!" I said trying to motivate them, "this is the time you'll spend sleeping on your friends' floor, not eating, and screwing women you don't know anyway. Why not do it for your career, making some money, and the spirit of adventure? How many people can do that? Do you want to live your life or read about it when some other band becomes famous because they did it?"
"Who's this guy? The booker, I mean," Johnny asked.
"His name is Swifty."
"A little Runyunesque don't you think?"
"Where'd you hear a phrase like Runyunesque?" I asked.
"Probably the same place you did, a book."

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Chapt 16: Breakfast of Champions